Collection Poster-Martin Buber-Yarom Vardimon

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secret

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

Martin Buber

1878-1965

Lived in Vienna, Frankfurt and Jerusalem

Philosopher

Thinker Tabs

Commentary

by Daniel Gordis

Martin Buber (1878–1965) was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher who was raised as a traditional Jew but who left that world for the secular academy of Europe. As the Nazis came to power, he was increasingly forbidden from teaching, and in 1938, he moved to Jerusalem, where he lived until his death. He is best known for his philosophic work I and Thou, but was also a noted biblical scholar.

Thus, we are probably best off understanding Buber’s enigmatic claim about journeys with unknown destinations in the light of the Bible’s focus on the very same theme. When God first reaches out to Abram, the first Jew, God’s command is that Abram leave his homeland, his birthplace and the land of his fathers and embark upon a journey (Genesis 12). It’s noteworthy, this first encounter–the first thing that God says to the first Jew is that he cannot stay where he is. Life, Judaism teaches us at every turn, is a journey—we are always on the move, leaving something and headed toward something else.

But while God is explicit about the place that Abram must depart, God says nothing about the destination. All Abram is told is that he should head “to the land that I will show you.” God says nothing about Canaan, or the Jordan River plains of the Mediterranean shore. The belief demanded of Abram is extraordinary: he must leave everything he knows, and he must do so not knowing where he is headed.

This Jewish focus on the journey more than the destination is evident even in the way that Jews read the Torah each year. We begin with Genesis and continue through Deuteronomy, culminating with the Israelites on the eastern shore of the Jordan River. And then, just as the Israelites are about to cross the river and enter into the Promised Land, we stop, return to the beginning of the Torah and start over again. In this cycle, we, like Abram, are always on our way. But we never actually arrive.

Martin Buber, a profoundly sensitive and deeply religious soul, understood well what religion at its best can be. It is about more than fulfilling commandments, more than seeking theological truth. The truly religious life is about not knowing; it is about searching, wondering and about making ourselves as open and as vulnerable as we can be, so that we might discover truths, commands, loves and meanings of which—at least now—we are hardly even aware.

About

Born in Vienna in 1878, Martin Buber left Vienna at age three when his parents separated, and lived with his grandparents in the Ukraine. By the time he returned to Vienna at age 14, Buber had read two works which influenced him greatly – Immanuel Kant’s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics and Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra.

Buber’s best-known essay Ich und Du (I and Thou), written in 1923, shows glimmers of these two earlier works, combining Kant’s attempt to synthesize experience (how we perceive something) and essence (the thing itself) and Nietzsche’s insistence on the unmediated life-force (the Dionysian) over deadening abstraction. Buber maintains that “All real living is meeting,” and describes in I and Thou the difference between encountering another with the wholeness of being – as I-Thou – as opposed to in a technical, self-serving way – as I-It.

This articulation of a “dialogical principle” – which exerted a significant influence on existentialist, Christian, and Jewish scholarship – was one of three foci of Buber’s work. The other two involved Jewish textual transmission and Zionist activism. Buber translated and interpreted Hasidic stories, especially of Baal Shem Tov and Rabbi Nachman of Breslau, and, together with colleague Franz Rosenzweig, translated the Hebrew Bible (Tanach) into German. While still in his early 20s Buber served as editor of Die Welt (The World), a weekly Zionist journal, and later became a proponent of a humanist-nationalist strain of Zionism that included a vision of a bi-national state.

Buber held a position at the University of Frankfort am Main when, in 1933, he resigned in protest of Hitler’s rise to power. In 1938 Buber emigrated to Palestine, where he took a professorship at the Hebrew University. He died at his home in Jerusalem in 1965.

Guide

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

The commentary to Martin Buber’s teaching reads Buber as echoing the story of Abraham and his journey to the land of Israel, reminding us that at every turn, life is a journey. The commentator compares this with the cycle that leads Jews on an annual journey through the Torah, only to begin anew each year. We are challenged by Buber to constantly strive for growth.

What kinds of journeys are there in life? What could be “secret destinations” of a journey? For what reasons could the traveler be “unaware” of them?

Think about your own life. Was there a journey you didn’t realize you were on until you reached your “destination”? How was your journey a life-changing experience?

What process do you use, or could you use, to glean the most out of life’s journeys?

WHAT DO YOU SEE?

Each image calls out to us to examine it, to note our thoughts and feelings, and relate these impressions to the quotation. Often clues in the artwork suggest meaning and invite interpretation.

Israeli designer Yarom Vardimon depicts Buber’s quotation by using simple shapes and colors.

How does the image present the quotation? Was this how you interpreted the quotation without the image?

Do you see any significance to the colors, lines, and background? How do they convey the concepts of “journey” and “traveler”?

What might be the artist’s intent in the layout of the quotation? In the black and white letters?

What emotions does this image evoke in you?

Please use this guide creatively in your programs. We’d also love to see what you’re doing and share it with others, so please post on our website using the Resource Share button.

Links

Buber's background

Buber’s obituary (1965) in the New York Times

Yarom Vardimon

Tel Aviv

Graphic designer

Design educator

Artist Tabs

About

Yarom Vardimon was born in Israel and studied in England at the London College of Print, Chelsea College of Art and the University of Westminster.

A professor of visual communications since 1980, he was in charge of the submission of the undergraduate (graphic design) and master’s degree (fashion, textile, jewelry, visual communication, industrial) design programs to the Council for Higher Education in Israel; was head of the graphic design department at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, and presently, he is the dean of the Faculty of Design at the Shenkar College of Engineering Design and Art, Ramat Gan. His clients include leading Israeli industries, banks, medical centers, academic institutions and museums.

Distinctions in design include: Laureate of the Israel Prize; Icograda Design Excellence Award; IBM Fellow of the International Design Conference, Aspen, USA; Honorary Member of

the Art Directors Club of New York and Design Excellence Award—International Design

Conference, Mexico Design Year. Elected to AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale) in 1982, (board member and director of New Media 2000–2003); past president, GDAI (Graphic Designers Association, Israel); past vice president, member of Education Committee, Icograda (International Council of Graphic Design Associations). He has judged many international design events, lectured at many academic institutions and has won many design awards. His work is represented at major international exhibitions and permanent

collections of museums in Europe, the United States, Japan and Israel.

Links

More design by Vardimon

Vardimon’s work at MOMA (NY Museum of Modern Art)